In many manufacturing industries, the joining and the securing of components are formed by locking screws. Screws thus play an indispensable role, are widely used in various fields and have a huge market potential.
Traditionally, while locking a screw to a workpiece, a user holds the screw in one hand and operates an electric screwdriver or a pneumatic screwdriver in the other hand. The traditional operation is quite time-consuming and laborious. In order to overcome the inconvenience resulting from the manual locking of screws, automatic locking screw machines are developed.
Screws may be fed in an automatic locking screw machine via air blowing or attraction. In general, since the air blowing method works continuously, the work head of the automatic locking screw machine does not need to move back and forth for every locking of screws. Hence, the air blowing type of the automatic locking screw machine has better efficiency than the attraction type of the automatic locking screw machine. However, the air blowing type of the automatic locking screw machine is limited by the shapes and the length-to-diameter ratios of the screws, and is thus not suitable for all kinds of screws. This is exemplified in the following descriptions.
FIG. 1A is a perspective diagram schematically illustrating a feeding duct and a screw suitable to be delivered via air blowing in the prior art, and FIG. 1B is a diagram schematically showing a planar view of the feeding duct and the screw suitable to be delivered by air blowing in the prior art shown in FIG. 1A.
As shown in FIG. 1A and FIG. 1B, a screw 12 is conveyed through a passage 11 of a feeding duct 10 to a work head of an automatic locking screw machine (not shown) by air pressure. Since the length L1 of the screw 12 is greater than the diameter D1 of the passage 11, the screw 12 will not flip or get stuck in the passage 11 of the feeding duct 10.
FIG. 2A is a perspective diagram schematically illustrating a feeding duct and a screw, which is not suitable to be delivered by air blowing in the prior art, and FIG. 2B is a diagram schematically illustrating a planar view of a screw shown in FIG. 2A.
As shown in FIG. 2A and FIG. 2B, the length L2 of a screw 13 is less than the diameter D2 of the passage, such that the screw 13 would flip or be stuck in the passage 11 of the feeding duct 10. The screw 13 is thus not suitable to be conveyed via air-blow feeding.
Therefore, there is a need to develop a device in order to overcome the above-mentioned drawbacks in the prior art.